The present invention relates to the encoding and decoding of XML-based structured documents, as provided for in MPEG-7, for example. XML (extensible markup language) is a standard for the definition of document structures and is used to represent structured data in a text file and typically forms the basis of the language XHTML. These XML-based structured documents are based on a set of structured elements (also referred to as a “Schema” below in this document) as can be specified, for example, using Document Type Definition (DTD), XML Schema or Multimedia Description Schemes (DS).
The binary format of MPEG-7 files and the setting up of navigation paths using tree-structured code tables is known from as in the listed publication [1] (hereafter “[1]”), for example.
The present invention further relates to the optimization of the encoding of structured XML documents. An underlying object of the present invention lies in specifying methods for improving the functionality of the binary representation of XML-based content descriptions, especially of MPEG-7 documents, in which the volume of data to be transmitted is as small as possible and search processes within the encoded document as well as the further processing of the encoded document are as simple as possible.